Moby-Dick Marathon has lots of readers, but needs money

The annual Moby-Dick Marathon doesn't need me to tell the world that this is one great event. The world already knows.

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Posted Nov. 21, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Nov 21, 2012 at 10:42 AM

Posted Nov. 21, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Nov 21, 2012 at 10:42 AM

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The annual Moby-Dick Marathon doesn't need me to tell the world that this is one great event. The world already knows.

But with this next reading in January, in its 17th year, the marathon has lost a federal grant and the New Bedford Whaling Museum is asking for money to let this event stand on its own two feet — or, one foot and a peg.

I don't think this will be very much trouble.

New Bedford Whaling Museum Science Director Robert C. Rocha Jr. sent out a letter earlier this month to past supporters and participants in the marathon, asking for donations. So far they've raised about $600, which is actually pretty good.

The whole enterprise doesn't cost much more than about $5,000, said Allison Smart, the museum's development director. That amounts to about two bucks for everyone who has participated in the past, Rocha points out.

So this year, they're looking for contributions (but a contribution won't buy you a reading time; that's separate). There is also a small cutback in the freebies — snacks, for instance. But admission to the museum will be free, keeping the event as egalitarian as possible.

"You could have broke college kids right next to Barney Frank right next to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or next to a Melville descendant," Smart said. Frank, in what will be among his first public appearances after leaving Congress, will read Chapter One this time around: "Call me Ishmael."

It's the Internet that the team really wants to keep going. "Twenty-one hundred people followed it on live streaming last year," said Rocha.

One of those people might have been a Dutch woman named Tjitske Swerver. But she's not staying home; she's going to travel to the museum to read in person for the third year, said Rocha. It's her friends and relatives who will watch her online; Rocha said she's been scheduled for a time when everybody in Europe will be awake.

While plane tickets are the expensive option of some readers, the biggest expenses to the museum are the costs of keeping the place open for 31 straight hours, the online streaming video, and the rented sound system, Smart said.

"Five thousand is the base amount we need to be able to pull it off at a level that people expect," said Smart.

Then there's the competition. Moby-Dick marathons, or near-marathons, are popping up around the world. Mystic Seaport has one. London has one. Artist Philip Hoare is organizing celebrities to read excerpts that will be posted on YouTube.

But they haven't got the Seamen's Bethel. They haven't got Herman Melville sailing to sea out of their harbor in 1841. They haven't got three chapters in the book.

"The difference is the sense of place and the authenticity," said Smart. "Anyone can do a reading anywhere."

If you need any further evidence that this marathon is as popular as ever, maybe more so, considering that in nine days more than 150 people have already signed up for reading slots, almost enough to get through the book, said Rocha.

The event is on the weekend of Jan. 5-6, and runs uninterrupted for about 24 hours. It's getting late to sign up for the prime slots, but go ahead and make it interesting. Go ahead and read at 4 a.m. You will never forget it.

Reading requests are accepted at 508-717-6851 or by email at mdmarathon@whalingmuseum.org.

Steve Urbon's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in The Standard-Times and at SouthCoastToday.com. He can be reached at 508-979-4448 or surbon@s-t.com.